The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  How strange and pitiful that only these shadows of words remained of a desperately lonely wife. Perhaps this was the blotting of a last note she had written before she died.

  Tracing the faint script, my fingers found an unevenness beneath the blotter, as though something might have been tucked under it. I pulled out two corners and bent the blotting paper back to reveal a folded sheet of ruled paper. When I picked it up the sheet fell open and I read the few words scrawled with a black felt pen.

  Tomorrow it will be done. Dont worry.

  The misspelling of “tomorrow,” the omission of the apostrophe in “don’t” showed near illiteracy. But whose illiteracy? For all I knew, some cleaning woman who couldn’t spell had left her promise to do as directed.

  Only I didn’t believe that. The skin on my arms crept a little as I stared at those scrawled words. This note was something that mattered—I was sure of it. I folded the paper again gingerly and covered it once more with the green blotting paper. It could stay hidden until I could do something about it.

  I left the desk and returned to my search for a weapon that would help me with the door: Now, more than ever, I wanted to reach Trevor. I must show him what lay under the blotter and I must tell him about the name Lori had mentioned—Joe Bruen.

  Continuing to circle the room, I came to the inner chimney, with its fireplace. It must not have been used for years, but an iron poker still stood in its stand by the hearth, and I picked it up in triumph. This would get me out of Cecily’s room.

  The panel did not break easily in that stout old door, though cracks appeared in the varnish after a blow or two. I continued to strike at the panel until the satisfactory sound of splintering rewarded me, and the poker went through. I’d drawn it back for another furious blow, when suddenly the outside bolt was slid back, and the door pulled open. My blow was already descending as Trevor caught my upraised hand. I gaped at him for a moment and then went limp, dropping the poker.

  “Thank goodness!” I said and fell into a chair. “I—I was locked in.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was down at one of the houses talking to the builder when you and Lori went by in her red car. I supposed she was bringing you here, since it’s one of her favorite places. But when she drove back a while later without you, I decided to investigate. Judging by all those smudges, you must have stopped along the way.”

  I nodded, not wanting to go into that. “Is Lori often given to this sort of trick?”

  He looked down at me grimly and I found myself remembering what a joyous person he had once been—a man with a zest for life and a brimming vitality that had carried him far. Had it been Lori who had quenched all that—Lori and his brother?

  “I’m sorry it happened,” he said, not answering my question.

  I couldn’t explain the rest—not the details about Lori’s behavior in the ruined house.

  “I thought she was near hysteria once or twice,” I told him.

  He looked away, not meeting my eyes, and I sensed his torment, sensed an anguish that went deeper than he wanted anyone to see.

  “Never mind,” I said quickly. “And I am sorry about damaging the door. I was getting a bit desperate and I had to get out. Though I don’t suppose she’d have left me here forever. She brought me over to show me the island. We were supposed to climb to the tower, where I could take some pictures.”

  He made an effort to rouse himself. “Then why not finish the tour, now that you’re here? If you’re not too upset.”

  “I’m fine. But first I want to show you something.” I went to the desk and slipped the paper from under the blotter, held it out to him. “I found this by chance. Do you think it means anything?”

  He studied the black scrawl for a moment. “I don’t know. It might.”

  “Lori said David had told her he believed a man named Joe Bruen was behind the fires. A hired pro, Lori said.”

  “Yes. David told me there was a torch involved. He was sure of that. But he didn’t give me his name. Perhaps this furnishes something more to work with.”

  Trevor took an envelope from his pocket and slipped the folded sheet into it carefully.

  “Can you really find out something from that?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I’ll send it to David’s company in New York and see what they can track down.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “It’s possible. Though they won’t be just Joe Bruen’s prints, of course. We’ve both handled it. And we can’t know if the person it was intended for ever saw it. It would be good to come up with his fingerprints too.”

  “Lori says that Giff Caton has been using the house lately. Sometimes sleeping here, so he could watch for what was happening.”

  Trevor shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but don’t let’s leap to conclusions. After all, the island still belongs to his family.”

  “The house would be a good place to work from if you were going to set fires, wouldn’t it?”

  He let that go. “At least there haven’t been any since David’s death. Now if you’re ready, we can climb to the tower.” He sounded impatient, perhaps eager to be rid of any duty to me.

  Once more I picked up my bag, and when we were out in the hall I looked about for the cat.

  “I hope Lori has taken Commodore away,” I said. “He had a shoulder wound that looked bad. As though someone had struck him with a rock.”

  “I didn’t see him when I came in, so we’ll hope she’s picked him up. Lori is fond of animals, and Chris dotes on that cantankerous old pirate of a cat.”

  We started up the stairs together, and I was no more comfortable in Trevor’s company than I’d been in Lori’s, though for a very different reason. It would be easy to let myself go if he would let me, and enjoy being with him. I found that I still liked to be near him, and I was all too aware when our arms touched casually as we mounted the stairs. But that was a road I dared not travel, and his indifference to me was a protection against myself. He wouldn’t quickly forget that I had been David’s wife, and therefore suspect. Nor did I forget for a moment that he belonged to Lori, and that he was far from indifferent to her, no matter what she had done.

  I climbed the stairs beside him, feeling torn and far more tense than I wanted to be.

  From above, the glass panes around the tower room flung light down upon us, though the circling floors were dark and shadowy with their closed doors.

  “What is in all those rooms?” I asked.

  “They’re mostly empty now. A lot of the furniture has been taken away. Some of it was old enough to be rated antique, and what hasn’t been moved to Asheville for the use of the family has been sold. There seems to have been a tacit agreement, however, to leave Vinnie’s library and bedroom, and Cecily’s sitting room, as they were. Maggie says the family doesn’t like to upset Vinnie, even now that he’s dead.”

  “Lori spoke of your turning the house into a museum that people could visit. It’s certainly distinctive enough to be worth preserving.”

  “The Catons would have to give their permission. Vinnie never intended his seclusion to be invaded. But I’d like to see the island opened up and made available. With a little success, I think Eric would give in. However, with all the troubles we’ve had—”

  “Don’t you think the fires are over now?”

  “I hope so. I only wish that David had told us more.”

  Trevor turned away and climbed ahead of me to the top of the house—the tower. When I reached the last steep step, he extended a hand to pull me up, and I found myself in a small, glass-enclosed room, with a balcony circling outside. A door led us out into the wind.

  The tower was higher than the four chimneys which the house boasted, and which grew from four wedges of roof below us. Once more the view was marvelous—reaching across treetops toward the Great Smokies, where for once the mountains stood up blue and clear from their many folds. In the other direction we could look over the lake to Trevor’s houses and follow bits
of the road that eventually wound its way up the mountain. I found his own house almost at once. What drama he had created up there! The house seemed poised to take flight from its eyrie, the roofs pointing outward like wings that would carry it away.

  “Did you know it would look like that?” I asked softly. “Before it was built, I mean?”

  “It was down on paper,” he said, “and I’d built a model. But even more it was a vision in my mind. Of course nothing ever quite matches the vision. Practical matters hold you down. Human limitations. But I think it comes close to what I imagined. I used to stand at this very rail and see in imagination what it would look like up there against the rock.”

  “It’s the finest of all your houses. Those I’ve seen. The most brilliant.”

  He said nothing, and to break a moment that was, for me, close to tears, I took out my camera and attached a telescopic lens. I wanted to catch the sweep of the mountain rising to the house at the very crest and bring it all nearer. When I went home I would be able to look and recall this moment of standing beside Trevor, looking at the faraway house he had built.

  While I was about it, I tried a shot or two of the nearer Belle Isle project, all too aware of the loss of joy, the loss of creative satisfaction in the man beside me.

  “There are closer views of the island and the houses,” he said. “Since you’re here you should see something more of Vinnie Fromberg’s beautiful isle.”

  I hung my camera strap around my neck and studied the nearer view—woods and winding paths, and a beach that had been put in, where ripples touched the sand. Beyond, centrally located on the island, was something else—a low white structure that sloped down a hillside and disappeared behind more trees.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  “It’s been called Vinnie’s Folly for years. He built it for Cecily. He was so wise and clever and shrewd—and so foolish when it came to his wife. He thought he could hold her here and keep her happy by giving her toys to play with. He belonged to a generation that still patterned itself after the Victorians and never seemed to learn very much about women. It’s an open-air theater, with which she was supposed to amuse herself.”

  “I saw some of her stage pictures in her room. But didn’t having a baby make up for losing the stage?”

  “I gather that her daughter’s care was mostly taken out of her hands by nurses and governesses. And later a suitable boarding school. Would you like to come and see her theater? It’s only a short walk.”

  For this small moment I wanted nothing more than to prolong my time alone with Trevor. The terrible question that I had gone to my room to think about had been resolved, dismissed. He had changed, but not in that way. There was a great deal to trouble, to haunt me, but I knew that Trevor Andrews would never have harmed his brother.

  Five

  We didn’t follow the original carriage road, but took a path that led through deep woods of oak and hickory, with here and there lovely tulip trees that would bloom in the spring. There were stands of hemlock and pine, and where the woods thinned, patches of sunlight crossed our way and September wild flowers bloomed on every hand.

  Trevor identified some of them for me. Those clusters of pink over there were joe-pye weed, and the yellow was wild artichoke. In a low damp place bright cardinal flowers grew, and there were stands of wild purple asters everywhere. The devil’s walking stick fascinated me—thorny, like a small tree with purple-red berries—and I loved the little heart’s-a-bustin’-with-love flowers. Always, of course, there was the surprise of the sourwood trees splashing their early autumn red among the green of other foliage not yet ready to turn.

  “Now we come to trouble,” Trevor said. “Look what’s happening here.”

  The path had turned away from the water, and a large area of sunlight opened on our left. The sun, however, lighted the strangest of scenes. Running toward the opposite side of the island, a heavy broad-leafed vine had swallowed the landscape. It had grown over bushes and trees and run along the ground unchecked, covering everything in its path. The shape of trees and shrubbery showed beneath the vines in rounded forms—almost like waves running across the island in undulating greenery.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it!” I said. “What on earth is it?”

  “Around here they call it mile-a-minute. It’s kudzu, a Japanese plant that was mistakenly introduced into the South before World War II. It was supposed to be good for fodder. And it was good for shade and ground cover, and rather beautiful—before it became terrifying. Only once it took hold it couldn’t be stopped. So far they figure it has swallowed at least a million acres of the South. King Kong Kudzu!”

  I left the path to touch a broad, three-pointed leaf in wonder. “What does it do—seed itself in?”

  “No. The American plants don’t produce seeds, but every twelve inches of the vine there’s a joint capable of producing new plants. That’s the way it moves. It can grow a foot in a night and there are jokes about closing your windows at dusk so the kudzu won’t climb in. James Dickey even wrote a poem about it and called the vines ‘green, mindless, unkillable ghosts!’”

  A marvelous description, I thought, regarding the monstrous jungle landscape with misgiving. It looked so—unnatural.

  “How did it get started here on the island?”

  “I suppose someone brought over a pretty plant—and this is the result. If it isn’t stopped it will bury trees, house, everything. Kudzu doesn’t strangle trees the way some vines do. It just covers them over and shuts out the sunlight so they die. Everything under there is dead or dying. The stuff’s hard to kill, because if you dig it up it will grow wherever it’s discarded. And it’s difficult to burn. There are chemicals that will kill it and I’ll start with them over here the minute Eric gives me a green light. We can’t have it swallowing Cecily’s theater, among other things.”

  At least the main thrust of the vine was toward the other side of the island, and the path had been left free, so we were able to walk on until our way met the carriage road again. We followed its broken surface through the woods to a tall hedge, where a gate barred our way. Here the drive ended in an open space where vehicles could be parked.

  “There used to be a stable here,” Trevor said, “but it rotted away long ago.”

  He opened the rickety gate and set it back on loose hinges. As I went through, the sight of the theater burst upon me in one breathless vision. It was a little Greek amphitheater, still a dazzling white as it ran down the hillside in circling stone steps to the wide spread of a stage below. Crowding hemlocks formed the wings and made a perfect backdrop to the stage. An effort had clearly been made to create a theater that was professional in every respect. High at the top, above the concrete tiers, were roofed sheds and a small building where piles of wooden chairs were still housed. On either hand towers built of open metal piping that would not hide the view held lighting equipment, with ladders climbing to the platforms at the top.

  “Did it give Cecily any pleasure at all?” I asked.

  “I think it must have at first. I’ve heard Vinnie talk about those days. He even brought in a company of players to act with her, and she had costumes made for the productions. Apparently she had a nice little voice and the acoustics here are good. She could dance a bit too, and Vinnie encouraged her and probably made her think she was better than she was. He told me once that she could never have made it outside on her own. Perhaps that was only what he wanted to think.”

  “But to lock her into her room, as Lori said he did!”

  “I think that was later, when she must have become a little unbalanced.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “He never liked to talk about that. I only know that she got away and came down here one moonlit night. She climbed that ladder over there to a lighting platform and threw herself off, down on the concrete. They say she died right away. She was only thirty-seven.”

  So this too was a haunted spot, I thought, and f
ound myself sighing. Poor young Cecily, dancing and singing her heart out down on that small stage. Then climbing to the lighting tower and flinging herself off to die on these very stones beneath our feet.

  “It’s a sad place,” I said. “Perhaps you should let the kudzu have it.”

  Trevor shook his head. “It’s better to build something useful on the old and wipe out painful memories. This is a little jewel of a theater and it could be easily restored. When Belle Isle is finished, and when the people I’ve built it for are living there, they could use a place like this. Then it would be for the living—as it should be.”

  “I think Cecily would like that,” I told him, marveling again at his tenacity. Despite all that had happened, he hadn’t given up. I felt far more clearly convinced of his attitude toward Belle Isle than I did about how he felt concerning Lori and David. Now and then I’d glimpsed an inner rage, but the volcano was kept well underground and if he harbored anger against Lori, he wasn’t letting it show. Which might in itself be dangerous.

  At least, since the moment when he had found me locked into Cecily’s room, his antagonism toward me seemed to have lessened a little. Indifferent he might be much of the time, but he was no longer blaming me because I was David’s wife.

  He smiled at me now as we walked down the steps, and I found that my hand was in his. He held my fingers lightly, casually, as he drew me along, steadying me on the descent.

  On the stage below us something moved, then slipped away into the hemlocks at one side. Trevor saw it too and stopped beside me on the concrete steps.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  For a moment there was no response. Then a man stepped out from the dark shelter of branches and stood looking up at us from the left side of the stage. It was Gifford Caton—Eric’s son, Maggie’s stepson.

  “Hello up there!” He raised an arm in languid greeting and his voice carried to us clearly. “Are you showing Karen our haunted theater?”

  “That’s right,” Trevor said, and as we went down the remaining tiers together he did not drop my hand. “What are you doing out here, Giff?” he asked, as we reached the edge of the stage.